LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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J 



Hollinger 

pH8.5 

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SPEECH 



OF 



IM.GEO.H.YEAMAI^ 



Of Kentucky, 



ON THE 



residfitfij ir0rlamati0ttt 



DELIVERED IN THE 



House of Representatives, 



*5>ee<^wv\ic^Y A^\\\, \^Q)^. .. 



\ V 



Baltimore . . . Prixted by John Mukpiiy & Co. 

Publishers, Booksellers, Printers and Stationers, 

Makble Building, ]82 Baltimork Street. 

1863. 



V^8 



*ST ia 






^ SPEECH. 



^Ir. Chairman: I have not sought to obtain the floor out of any factious oppo- 
sition to the Administration. Neitlier will I offend its iriends by that fierce advo- 
cacy of a system of pro-slavery propagandism which has done nearly as much 
harm on this floor and in the country as the policy, or rather the hobby, of aboli- 
tion. My highest ambition is to appear here to-day as the champion of my 
country, and of my country's Constitution, which is at once the charter and the 
, bulwark of my country's liberties. " 

Neither do I intend to consume the time of the House in making a speech 
against the rebellion. I have been speaking against it for two years in a country 
where it has had many able defenders on the stump, and now has many brave 
defenders in the field. The rebellion does not need to be argued with so much as 
it needs to be struck — to be struck such blows by our armies as have not yet been 
dealt to it. The principal promises I made to those who sent rae here were, that 
I would accept no solution of our difficulties other than the unity of the Republic 
and the supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United Stales; that I was 
in favor of putting forth the whole constitutional power of the Government to 
effect this; that I would vote all the men and all the money needed for that pur- 
pose; and that I would support this Administration, and the President at the head 
of it, against whom we all voted, if he would support the Constitution, and wage 
an earnest and decent war, inside the pale of the Constitution and the laws of na- 
tions and of humanity, to vindicate the majesty of the laws, I sit here day by 
day prepared to redeem these pledges. 

But there are some things in the land that need to be spoken against; my con- 
stituents expect it of me; and by being spoken against now by those who are 
known to be the friends of the Government, it may save to our children, possibly 
to ourselves the trouble of fighting against them hereafter. Well might we dis- 
pense with our whole budget of political resolves, and for them substitute the 
nervous words of the alarm bell of another assembly in other times, " the republic 
is in danger." Those to whom we have committed the keeping of our desiinies 
will excuse me if I say they have laid themselves obnoxious to the charge hurled 
by Cicero against Pompey, when he complained that the decree of the Roman 
Senate — " let the consuls see that no detriment comes to the republic"" — had not 
been obeyed. 

On a former day of this session I had the honor to submit to this House the 
following resolutions: 

"RemJvtd by the Boutt nf Representation, (the Senate concurring,) that the Proclamatiftn ofipfe Tresident of the 
United Statey, of the22d of September, 1862, is not warranted by the Constitution. 

"H S'iIvkI, 'Ihat the policy of emancipation, as indicated in that proclamation, is not calculated to hnsien the 
restoration of peace ; ia not well chosen as a war measure; and is an assumption of power dangerous to the rights 
of the citizen and to the perpetuity of free government." 



These resolutions were promptly laid on the tableland I now desire to giv 
some of my reasons for offering tliem. 

Republican Platform. 

When the Republican party met in convention at Chicago, in 1860, to nomi- 
nate a candidate for the Presidency, and to adopt and put forth a platform of prin- 
ciples to recommend to the people, they made one which, with nlany faults, con- 
tained some good things. ■ One clause of the second section affirmed : 

" That the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and tha Union of the States, must and shall he pre- 
served." 

That was a good plank to put in the platform of any party. The fourth article 
is all so good that I will quote it entirely : 

" Fourth: That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to 
order and control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that 
balance of power on whicli tlie perfection and endurance of our political faith depends, and we denounce the law-, 
less invasion by armed force of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of 
crimes." 

The party putting forth these principles was successful. The President came 
to the administration of the Government under the most inauspicious circum- 
stances that ever attended the inauguration of any other Chief Executive of the 
Republic. ■ Secession had begun its work. A political poison that had lurked in 
the systern for sixty-three years— I mean since 1798 — and which had produced 
strong eruptive symptoms in 1830-32, had at last become a frightful running sore, 
and was rapidly dissolving the political and territorial integrity of the nation. 

The First Position of the Administration. 

The difficulties and complications of the situation, both political and military, 
were such that no course the President could have pursued would have been free 
from plausible criticism, and from the confident charge of having sacrified the Re- 
public when a different course, would have saved it. 

Much of his conduct has been approved by the loyal men in the slaveholding 
States, and while they have disapproved much of it, they have sometimes done so 
with the concession that there was much to palliate and excuse. Upon the main 
subject we now discuss, the subject matter of the President's late proclamation, 
the country was filled with hope by the language of the President's inaugural 
address : 

"I halve no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where It 
exists. I believe I Iiave uo lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." 

The President proceeds to say : 

" There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read 
is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions: ' No persoi; held to service or labor in one 
State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation tlierein, be 
discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or 
labor may be due.' It is scarcely questionable that this provision was intended by those who made it for the re- 
claiming of what we call fugitive slaves: and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress 
swear their support to the whole Constitution, to this provision as much as any other. To the proposition, then, 
that slaves, whose cases oume within the terms of this clause, sluiU be delivered up, their oaths are unanimous." 



In his first message the President says : 



"I-est there be some uneasiness in the minds of randid men as to what is to be the conrse of the Government 
towards Southern States after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it propt^r to say it 
will be his purpose then, as ever, to be gixided by the Constitution and the laws, and that he will probably have no 
different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights of the States 
and the people under the Constitutiou than that expressed in the inauguaral address." 

Soon afterwards the avowed policy of the Administration and the true law of 
the case were slated by Mr. Seward, Secretary of State, in his official correspond- 
ence with Mr. Dayton, then representing us abroad : 

"Thd condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same, whether it (the revolution) succeed 
or fail. There is not even a pretext for the complaint that the disaffected States are to be conquered by the United 
States if the revoluiton fail; for the rights of the States and the condition of every human being in them will re- 
main subject to exactly the same laws and forms of administration, whether the revolution shall succeed or fail. 
In the one case the States would be federally connected with the new confederacy; in the other they would, as 
now, bo members of the United States; but their constitution and laws, customs, habits, and institutions, in either 
case will remain the same. 

'•It is hardly necessary to add to this incontestable statement, the further fact that the new President, as well 
as the citizens through whose suffrages he has come into the administration, has always repudiated all designs 
whatever and whenever imputed to him and them of disturbing the system of slavery as it is existing under the 
Constitution and laws. 

"The case, however, would not be fully presented if I were to omit to say that any such efforts on his part would 
be unconstitutional; and all his actions in that direction would be prevented by the judicial authority, even 
though they were assented to by Congress and the people." 

In February, 1861, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution introduced by 
the Senator from Ohio, (Mr. Sherman :) 

"Resoheil, That neither the Congress of the United State."!, nor the people or governments of the non-slavehold- 
ing States have the constitutional right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any of the slavehold i ug States 
in the Union." 

In July, 1861, the resolution of my venerable colleague, (Mr. Crittenden,) 
passed both Hou.ses of Congress, with, I believe, but two dissenting votes in each 
House : 

"That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the .southern 
States now in revolt agaiust the constitutional Government, and in arms around the capital ; that in this national 
emergency Congress, banishing all feeling of mere passion or resentuient, will recollect its duty to the wlmle coun- 
try ; that this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of opiircssion, nor for any purpose of conquest or sub- 
jugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions in those States, but 
to defend and maintain the supromac/of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity equality, 
and rights of the several States unimpaired; that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to 
cease." 

When General Fremont undertook to emancipate slaves in Missouri by pro- 
clamation, the objectionable part of it was repudiated by the Administration. The 
President, if he has not been misunderstood, said, in his conversations with mem- 
bers of this House, especially as reported by the gentleman from Maryland, (Mr. 
Crisfield) and my colleague before me, (Mr. Menzies,) that he had ueiiher 
power nor intention to do the thing now complained of. I quote the substance, 
not the language. I feel at liberty to do so, since those gentlemen did not deena 
it confidential. 

Tht^^e things gave hope to the country. I do not mean by this that he gave 
hope 10 those wliom the other side of this House denounce as pro slavery propa- 
gandists. I am not one of them. But they gave hope to the friends of constitu- 
tional liberty that the Constitution would be abided by. A policy was announced, 
solemn promises were made; and their virtue was not merely in being a policy, 
but that it was a good policy — not merely in being good promises, but promises 



that Avere gloriously worthy ot being kept. I am not making these quotations 
with the view to fasten inconsistency upon the Administration. Inconsistency is 
often a small thing to be proved, when that is all of it. To cripple a political ad- 
versary is a common ambition. I am void of it to-day. I desire to cripple nobody, 
but only to heal the wounds of my countri. Sir, I do not even do it to complain 
of broken promises, but for the higher purpose of calling the attention of the 
country — and especially of the gentlemen on the other side of this chamber — to 
the great responsibility and the great danger that may be and have been incurred 
by making such promises to the ear and breaking them to the hope. And I do it 
for another purpose. As the lawyer or the judge searches the reports for authori- 
ties, I have the legitimate right — one of the rights of discussion — to call to my 
assistance the great names, the great influence, and the acknowledged ability of 
the authors of these doctrines, to enable me to attack with success the errors of 
the proclamation. 

I repeat, that from these things the country took cheer; but General Hunter, 
from whom better things had been expected, issued his proclamation emancipating 
(on paper) the slaves of the three States of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, 
The President repudiated the proclamation, but did it Avith the very ominous 
reservation to himself of the right to determine the legality of such measures, or 
the military necessity that might require their adoption. We also remember that, 
in the proposition for compensated emancipation, soon after so decorously and, I 
believe, so honestly made, and especially insisted upon with the border State 
members, he indicated there was "a pressure" upon him from a designated 
quarter — the party who approved General Hunter's paper fulmination of freedom; 
that the country could not afford to lose the support of those from vvhom this 
pressure came; and a friendly admonition — for I have too much respect for the 
qualities of my people and the President's appreciation of them to call it a threat — 
that if this scheme were not adopted, worse might come. The thing bears honesty 
upon the face of it, yet it is at once a melancholy and a ludicrous chapter in our 
political history. The Chief Executive of the greatest Republic in the world 
complaining of a pressure upon him lo do a thing he did not want to do — a thing 
he had promised not to do, and warning his friends that he was about to give way 
under this pressure; thus advertising those who were applying it to redouble the 
force of the application! If he had plainly and stoutly said to the pressure party, 
"Away with your nonsense and with your malice, I will none of it, I will abide 
by the Constitution," the agony would have been quickly over; and if he had 
lost their support, which is not at all probable, he would have, been more than 
compensated by the support of those glorious majorities that have recently gone 
against his plans. 

The Proclamations. 

Rut an all-seeing Providence has permitted, and a wilfully blind fanaticism has 
decreed, a diiTerent policy. The President's two proclamations — one putting the 
whole country under martial law as to certain offences, and leaving it to military 
inquisitions to determine those offences, and the guilt of the offenders, with only 
the vague and worse than no definition of "disloyal practices" to go by; the 
other declaring. 



"That on the 1st day of January, in the year of our I.nrd. 1863, all' persons held as slaves in any State, or 
desiciiiitod part of a State, the peofle wliereof shall then be in reU.lIiuu against the United States, shall he thea 
theni-eforward, and forever free; and the executive gnvei-nment of the United States, including the military ^and 
naval authority thereof, will remgi.ize nnd niaini'ii the freedom of such persons, and will do no ac: c acta to 
nifpieiH such persons, or any of them, in ani/ efuna tUey m ly make for their actnal freedom ;" 

And offering to reconimentl to Congrres iliat loyal masters who may suffer by tliis 
measure shall be compensated by the General Government; but whether we 
•adopt that recommendation or not, the edict is still to be enforced. The language 
used is ominous. I hope its selection, and remarkable adaption to facts, were ac- 
cidental and not intentional. Executive pou-er is an expression of the Constitu- 
tion—" Executive Government of iheVn'nedSlales" is new. The Army and Navy- 
have not been considered aulhorilies in our system, but agencies subject to civil 
authority. The declaration that there shall be ?ioacts done to suppress any efforts 
the slaves may make for actual freedom is chilling. 

If this thing is legal, the right of the slave to freedom will become vested 
instanter on the issual of the next proclamation on the 1st of January. The 
right to freedom being once legally acquired, can the President, or Congress, or 
any earthly power, legally deprive him of tint right? The Kentucky Court of 
Appeals would hold not. Then suppose that on the 1st of February it is made 
known that by abandoning this scheme the Union can be restored, what condition 
are we in ? Of course I would find no difficulty. But what would those who 
maintain the lawfulness of the measure do? Prefer the Union to the negro, or 
the negro to the Union? I want an answer, and I want it because it Vvould 
throw some light on the question — where are we drifting? 

Considering the large number of that race whose political status is to he thus 
changed, about as numerous as all the inhabitants of the colonies at the revolu- 
tionary war, the estimated value of these persons as property, he enormous value 
of the products of their labor, the intimate connection of that labor with the agri- 
culture of one-third, and with the commerce two-thirds of our people, its connec- 
tions with business and with credit in both sections of the country, and the sudden 
and convulsive change which is to come over all these., we may safely affirm there 
is not a precedent like it in the annals of the world. History recites many great 
and beneficent changes in the relations between dominant and servient or i^ul)ject 
classes in Greece, in Russia, and in our own mother England ; but none of tiieni 
have ever been so sudden and violent as it is proposed this one shall be. It is 
doubtful whether it is in the power of man to produce such a one as is now de- 
manded. Certainly none such can ever be beneficial. I have not forgotten the 
exodus of Israel out of Egypt which was ordered and piloted by divine power 
and skill That was scarcely more than a lithe in magnitude, in comparison vviih 
the change now proposed for our country. 

Where did the President derive the power to do this great thing? The Consti- 
tution of the United States creates ihe office of President, and vests in that officer 
the executive power of the Government. The same instrument that creates 
the office, confers upon the officer all the powers he has. It is as safe as it is 
true to say he has none outside of the instrument. He has such as are given, and 
among those given are none to issue these proclamations. I care not for any con- 
nection you may trace between the proclamations and acts of Consress, Con- 
gress had no more power to authorize the President to do these things, than he 
had to do them without any such supposed authority. Indeed, the legislative 



authority is not claimed in defence of both, but only of the one establishing mar- 
tial law, and for this the war power is a much more plausible pretext than any- 
thiifg to be found among the powers of the legislative department. 1 have asked 
the question, and I want it answered — where did the President get this power? 
The President very lately denied the power, and has not ventured to defend it in 
his message to this House. The Secretary of State, with the knowledge and ap- 
proval of the President, denied it in his instructions to our foreign ministers with 
the view of advising the leading Powers of our deliberately adopted policy on 
this great question. The Senate denied it in the Sherman resolution ; both Houses 
of Congress denied it in the Crittenden resolution ; and greater far than this, than 
these, than all, the people have denied it. 

With all this great weight of authority, I yet scarcely know how to construct a 
regular legal argument against the vahdity of these measures. There are some 
things difficult to be explained, because they need no explanation, they are so 
plain when looked at. 

If I am asked to prove the sun is bright or the sky is blue, I have only to reply, 
look! If I am asked to prove the illegality of these measures, I can properly 
answer by asking for a clause, a sentence or a word in the Constitution that 
authorizes them. I ask, " is it so nominated in the bond ?" Will the other side 
of this House venture to reply, "it is not so expressed; but what of that?" I 
hope they will. We will then have an- issue jpined upon which we can put our- 
selves upon the country and demand a verdict. 

A War Measure. 

It is very significant upon this question that the friends of these measures have 
not yet claimed that there is any direct authority for them, but only that they are 
military necessities; that is, useful and necessary war measures. This is aban- 
doning the Constitution, and substituting in its stead a Government whose only 
source of power is the necessity of a given emergency, and one man is judge of 
the emergency and of the measures necessary to meet it. Theoretically it is a 
despotism. If it does not become one in practice, we haA^e only to thank those 
who adopt the theory that their work is not as broad as their rule. 

Gentlemen ought to be careful how they make precedents out of necessities and 
war measures. They might become a two-edged sword. They would cut North 
as well as South. It is falsely assumed that slavery is the cause of the rebellion. 
This is constantly assumed, but never yet proven. The cause of the rebellion 
was jealousy — thirsty ambition. When secession was a foregone conclusion, the 
conspirators had not the audacity to vote, in the other end of the Capitol, that 
they then needed further protection to slavery in the Territories; and the duty to 
protect, when necessary, was the distinguishing feature of their platform. Mr. 
Yancey, the master spirit among them, said, in his correspondence with Lord 
Russell, contrary to the words and the substance of the alarm he cried at the 
South : " It was from no fear that the slaves would be liberated that secession took 
place." 

No, Mr. Chairman, slavery was not the cause of the rebellion, but only a hobby 
in the hands of skillful conspirators, who understood their business, and did it 
well. The conduct of northern agitators, and of this Congress since the rebellion 



began, has o[iven plausibility to the falsehood. Slavery was not the cause of the 
rebellion. This logic would make all slaveholders rebels, whereas many who 
have sulTered most for the Government, and fought as well for it on the field 'and 
harder for it at the polls than any others are slaveholders. Is the owner of a slave, 
of necessity, the enemy of the Government? How was it, then, that those who 
participated most in framing the Government, and most in administering it for 
fifty years out of seventy-five, were owners of slaves'? The argument is an ab- 
surdity. It is not the moving cause, but only the hobby of the movers to fire the 
southern heart, and to precipitate a revolution. Was there never a rebellion or 
revolution in a country where there was no African slavery? And shall we 
adopt the plan of destroying any particular interest which happens to be selected 
as the theme of declamation and the means of intrigue by bad men? We have 
both false premises and false deductions from those premises. 

But it is decreed that slavery shall be destroyed, and its destruction is called a 
WAR MEASURE. Very Well. Here is a precedent. Now, suppose New England 
had demanded a high protective tariff on cotton and leather goods. It is refused; 
and she either secedes or attempts to collect the duties at her own ports, and raises 
an army to maintain the position thus assumed. The Government sends an 
army to enforce the laws. The fortunes of war vary. The brave sons of the 
granite hills and the pine forests were not so easy to conquer as had been sup- 
posed. And then the President says that as cotton and leather manufactures were 
the cause of the rebellion, their destruction has become a military necesshy in the 
suppression of the rebellion, and the imperial edict goes forth that on the 1st day 
of January, 1863, all cotton mills and boot and shoe factories in States and parts 
of States in rebellion shall be burned down. The citizens of Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois might ask for an exemption from railroad tax. It is refused ; mobs resist 
the assessors and collectors; a few regiments of militia are called out, and the in- 
surgents beat them off. This is civil war. The principle applies to a small war 
as well as to a large one, and to one property as well as another. The Stales are 
declared in rebelhon, and the railroads the cause of the rebellion. Their destruc- 
tion IS decreed as a military necessity, and on an appointed day of vengeance the 
beds are torn up, the ties burned, the rails crooked, and the depots demolished. 
A prominent citizen of New York is seized and cast into prison by a Federal 
officer; he is released by a State court on habeas corpus ; he is again seized : the 
State officers summon the posse cnmitaliis to sustain and enforce the judgment of 
the State court; a conflict ensues; of course the New Yorkers would beat the 
Federals on the first round, but " the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy 
of the United States" would head them in the end. He would only have to 
proclaim that as State courts and State writs did all the mischief, he would, on 
New Year's day, or on Thanksgiving day, or some other good day, abolish the 
whole catalogue. Of course it would be idle to complain that your Circuits, your 
tluarter Sessions, your Surrogates, your Oyer and Terminer, your Common Pleas, 
your Appeals, and your High Court of Errors were State institutions. The 
President knew that, but they were the cause of a naughty rebellion, and a mili- 
tary necessity required that they should be suppressed as promptly as ever his 
kind Kentucky mother obliged him into his good behaviour on the banks and 
braes of the bonny Nolin. I would the President could in these feverish times go 
take one long, cooling draught from the stream of his nativity, and stroll one hour 



10 

upon that pebbly shore where his innocent young life first saw the sunhght of 
hcivn dance as if for joy upon its bosom, and once more sit, the bright-eyed 
angl'r, where his childhood drew irom those clear, deep pools the finny tribe with 
a purer and a warmer delight than his manhoo'l received the lightning's news 
of his accession to the Presidency. His policy will redden liiat stream with the 
blood of the friends and the kindred he left behind him, until its gentle cascades 
will sigh for iheir sorrow. 

The illustrations could be multiplied without number. Our country is rich in 
resources for military necessities. The public lands, the jury system, the lakes 
and rivers, taxes, Territories, negroes, either slave or free, could any of them, 
if well plied, furnish an occasion. It is a foolish thing, Mr. Chairman, this doc- 
trine of destroying vi et arniis the subject matter of a controversy, the material 
thing or interest about which a rebellion or a war is supposed to have originated. 
Under this new rule, when we went to war with England in defence of sailors' 
riglits, England might easily have concluded that as she was very much engaged 
just then with Napoleon, it was a military necessity that she should end in a sum- 
mary way the war with her spirited cousins by hanging to the yard-arm, all the 
impressed seamen whose rights we claimed had been violated. And Washington, 
finding a small speck of war on his hands when he sent out the militia under a 
good General to suppress the Whiskey Insurrection, might have concluded that as 
whiskey was the cause of the rebellion, and whiskey was made in the distilleries, 
he would destroy all the distilleries, and as whi>ikey was made of oorn, he would 
burn all the corn, and ibr fear more distilleries would be built and more corn 
planted, he would issue his proclamation against any such building and planting. 
And in doing this he would not have been much further wrong than the radicals 
of this day ; for, adntitting slavery to be as bad as you say, it is yet no worse than 
bad whiskey. 

The proclamation was a bad precedent to put in the books, and bodes evil to all 
the country : 

*' In tlicse cases. 
We stilt hare judgment liere; tliiit we hut tench 
Bloody instructions, vvhicli, Ijeing taught, return 
To plague the iuvctor; this even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
To our own lips." 

The way to suppress the rebellion is to whip the rebels, and to do it well and 
quickly ; but all the time offer them the whole protection of the law which you 
say they have violated, and which you say you are trying to enforce. I mean, of 
cour.se, offer them the protection of the law, just as they obey the law. WHiat aa 
anomalous attitude for a nation to occupy, waging a tremendous war to execute 
the law, (for that is all that is meant by the suppression of a rebellion,) and claim- 
ing to suspend or disregard all law while straining the power of the Government 
to its utmost tension to enforce the same law ! 

If these measures were unconstitutional when the President and the Secretary 
and the Senate said so, when did they become legal? When was the Constitu- 
tion changed ? Or, if it has remained the same, when did the light of a new and 
a better construction pour like an illuminating flood upon the minds of the Presi- 
dent and his advisers? No, Mr. Speaker, there has been no change; there has 
been no new light. We are only running the way of all the earth — repeating the 



11 

blunders of nations in trouble and of people enraged. The most attractive his- 
torian of modern times, in reciting how a noble lord like to have died of niortiiica- 
tion on hearing that his son had turned rebel, and yet turned rebel himself in less 
than a fortnight, says : 

"In revolutions men live fast; the experience of years is crowded into hours; old habits of thought and action 
are viulently broken; novelties, which at first inspired dread and disgust, become in a few dajs familiar, eudur- 
»ble, attractive." 

The profoundest investigator of modern historians, in alluding to the violent 
remedies adopted by Governments when assailed by powerful insurrections, and 
especially in regard to martial law, says : 

"There may, indeed, be times of pressing danger, when the conservation of all demands the sacrifice of the 
legal rights of a few : there may be circumstances that not only justify, but compel, the Itrnjiorary abandonment 
of constitutional forms. It has been usual for all Governments, during actual rebellion, to proclaim martial 
law, or the suspension of civil jurisdiction." * « * * "But it is of high importance to 

watch with extreme jealousy the disposition toward which most Governments arc prone— to introduce too soon, 
to extend too far, to retain too long, so perilous a remedy." * * * * "It is an unhappy con- 

sequence of all devi.itions from the even course of law that the forced acts of overruling necessity come to be dis- 
torted into precedents to serve the purposes of arbitrary power." 

Hallam lived, studied, and wrote in a country wilhovt a written conslitvlion. 
Burke, who saw and described more clearly than any other philosopher the cur- 
rents and the breakers, the benefits and the calamities, of the great convulsion in 
France, said, " We are alarmed into reflection." We have passed through all 
these stages; we have lived fast; we have become accustomed to that which was 
at first dreadful ; we have adopted too soon, and continued too long, the violent 
remedies so common in revolutionary times; and now, fortunately now, we are 
alarmed into reflection . The sober second thought has overtaken and will save 
us. Mr. Chairman, I do not intend to argue the unconstitutionality of these 
measures with the expectation of convincing those who are predetermined to 
believe anything constitutional which will destroy an institution they hate, though 
it be recognized and protected in the Constitution. That were a hopeless task. 
But there are people in the country who can see the dangerous tendency of these 
things; and to ihern, and for them, I will speak. I would admonish them to 
consider at once the source and the cause of our institutions, and the evils they 
were intended to guard against. 

The Origin of our Institutions — English History and Proclamations. 

The history of England is the best commentary on the Constitution of the 
United States, That great instrument is but the reduction to writing, with 
some improvements, of the best features of English statutes and English cus- 
toms. It is the refined wisdom distilled by dear experience from the fierce 
conflict between haughty princes and a hardy, independent, and spirited race. 
The throne constantly sought to exercise the " kingly prerogative," and the people 
as constantly contended for their personal freedom, their rights of property, and 
for the correction of abuses in the administration. 

There is but one irrepressible conflict in politics, the conflict between the agres- 
sions of executive power and the liberty of the citizen. In these conflicts the king 
was always the loser, and the barons or the people always the gainers. The 
prerogative and the power of the crown were always lessened, and the importance 



12 

and liberty of the citizens as constantly increased. The prerogative as clait)ied 
by the king was generally exercised in the suspension of some law, or declaring 
something law that was not law, or levying a tax or a subsidy that the Parlia- 
ment had not granted, or in granting monopolies that were profitable to favorites 
and oppressive to the masses. These things were generally done by proclama- 
tion, or letters patent under the great seal. The Commons, the great prototype 
of this House, and the people, the fathers of our people, would respectfully 
address, humbly petition, stoutly demand, or forcibly resist, as the state of the 
quarrel demanded. Out of these contests, including that of the colonies with the 
mother country, grew our constitution. Away back in the dim twilight of British 
history the seeds of our system were sown. At Runnymede they germinated, 
and burst through a stubborn and unwilling soil; and from that day up to York- 
town the plant has been nurtured by the blood, and pruned and guided by the 
arms of the first race of earth. Those seeds, sown in the days of tlie Edwards, 
the Henrys, the Johns, the Jameses, the Charleses, and the Georges, bloomed 
into strength and well-proportioned fullness in 1787. Ali ! sir, if we would but 
consider how costly were the lights that Convention worked by. Their own 
revolution was not the only light. It was but the last. Can any man doubt that 
the struggles of out British ancestors were the real source whenceour institutions 
sprung? 

When the men of 1776 and 1787 came to form a Government for themselves 
and their posteriiy, they remembered that men in the old country had been legis- 
lated out of their lives and out of their estates without a trial, and without a 
chance to defend; that men had been punished as felons for doing that U'hich 
was nor a crime at law when they did it; that the heirs of dead men had been 
hounded and persecuted with 'these bills, and therefore they said : 

" No liill of attainder or rx post facto law shall be passed." 

"Nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due course of law." 

The power and the wisdom and the goodness of these few simple words are 
only felt when it is remembered how many had died upon the scaffold and on the 
block, how many, had begged upon the streets, and how matiy had languished in 
prison, because these words had not been written and obeyed sooner. They had 
learned that the estates of wealthy men had been a powerful incentive with needy 
princes to have them convicted of treason through the instrumentality of subser- 
vient judges and packed juries ; and that at coiTimon law it was an mcident of a 
judgment and a conviction of treason that the blood was attainted, and this for- 
feited the estate of the criminal, and so corrupted his blood that his children could 
not inherit, cutting them off at once from their patrimony and .from all motive to 
love and obey the Government; and that, in times of angry political excitement, 
this was sometimes effected by the more summary process of bills of attainder, 
without a trial at law. 

They therefore declared not only that no such bill should be passed, but also that 

"No attainder of treason- [which followed a .judgment without a bill] should work corruption of blood, or for- 
feiture, except during the life of the person attainted." 

They had read much of arrests without warrants, of trials, convictions, and 
executions for political offenses, when the accused was allowed neither witness 



13 

nor counsel; of the rude visits and unjust acts under writs of assistance, and 
hence ordained : 

"No person shall be held to answer for a cajxital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indict- 
ment of a grand jury, except in cases arising iu the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual service, 
in time of war or public danger." 

That in all crinninal prosecutiops the accused should have "a speedy and public 
trial," should " be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation," sliould 
have the benefit of counsel and compulsory process for witnesses, that the people 
should "be secure in their houses, persons, and papers," and no writs siiould be 
issued witliout probable cause, supported by oath, and describing the thing or 
person to be seized. 

They knew the history of tlie licensing acts, and the censorship over the press 
which had survived liie logic of Milton and Locke; they knew that good men had 
been imprisoned in the Tower for publishing the proceedings of Parliament, and 
said, '* Congress shall make no' law abridging the freedom of speech or the press." 

They knew the history of place bills, and the evils that called for their enact- 
ment, amd provided that no man holding any office under the Government should 
be a member of either House of Congress. They knew the history of the 
dreary imprisonments and bloody judicial murders that had been ofTered up as the 
reasonable service of cringing, time-serving judges, who wore their white wigs 
and black gowns, got drunk on claret, and received bribes in the form of presents, 
during the pleasure of an exacting prince, and provitled that our judges should 
hold their offices "during good behaviour." They knew the history of subsidies,' 
of forced loans, of ship money, and Plampden's heroisai, and provided that Con- 
gress should levy taxes. 

They knew the history of the London Tower, and all its long, damp, and 
neglected imprisonments ; they were lamiliar with the history of the " bloody- 
assizes," ahd with the doings of the Star Chamber, which the historian has told 
us " possessed an unlimited discretionary authority of lining, imprisoning, and 
inflicting corporal punishment, and whose jurisdiction extended to all sorts of 
offences, contempts, and disorders that lay not within the reach of the commou 
law." We are also tcld . that during these evil times "the crown possessed 
the lull Icigislative power % means of proclamalions, which might aff'ect any 
matter, even of the greatest importance,. artd which the Star Chamber took care to 
see more rigorously executed than the laws themselves." " The sovereign even 
assumed supreiiie and uncontrolled authority-over all foreign trade, and neither 
allowed any person to enter or depart the kingdom, nor any commodiiy to be 
exported or imported without his consent." And. these proclamations the historian 
has denounced as " strong symptoms of absolute government." They knew the 
cruelty of judges whose bread was earned by construing away the lives of politi- 
cal opponents, and saw the splendid examples of moral and official heroism by 
an independent judiciary, ahd provided that the salaries of judges should not be 
diminished during their continuance in office. 

These things are mentioned by way of general illustration to show the safety, 
aye, the necessity, of- clinging to the Constitution, and the danger of going back 
to the days of prerogative and proclamations. 

The authors of our written Constitution were familiar with the numerous 



14 

statutes that had been passed in England to secure the liberty of the citizen by 
securing to him the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, that great command to 
"have the body" of an imprisoned man before an impartial judge, and said it 
" shall not be suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public 
safety may require it." It required the most refined torture of language, as well 
as wilful forgetfulness of the historical origin of this clause, to make it mean the 
President may suspend it without the authority of Congress. They were familiar 
with the thousand attempts to make treason out of words and out of thoughts, 
and the attempts to define it and restrict it by statute; and when they came to 
define it, they copied the language and selected but two of the acts in the statute 
of Edward III. They knew how often the Commons had been forced to resort 
to the expedient of cutting off supplies to control the king, and provided that all 
money bills should originate in this House, the most popular branch of the Gov- 
ernment. They knew that the royal prerogative had been exercised to prorogue 
Parliament when they became troublesome, and to refuse writs for a new Parlia- 
ment when it was needed, and provided for the biennial election of members and 
the annual meeting of Congress. They knew that upon the decline of the feudal 
system in Europe — that system which made every man a soldier to a certain ex- 
tent — many princes ran to the opposite extreme of immense standing armies, and 
they had learned few, if any, examples of legislative assemblies doing their work 
freely, deliberately, and impartially in the presence of such a power — indeed, that 
many of them fell into desuetude, and that the Estates of France had not met for 
several generations. To avoid these unhappy results, they thought they would 
put the army under the control of the civil power, and the civil power under the 
control of the people. 

The coin had been debased, and James had filled Ireland with brass money ; 
and the Convention left the coining of money and the regulation of its value, and 
the regulation of weights and measures, to Congress. They had heard that 
English jurors had been dragged into the Star Chamber, and outrageously fined 
and indefinitely imprisoned, for presuming to bring in a verdict of "not guilty," 
and made a Government where such things would be impossible while it lasted. 
The court of High Commission had punished for religious opinions and religious 
teachings; there had been Test Oaths and Acts of Supremacy ; Catholics had 
persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, and factions of each 
had persecuted factions of their own party; and the Convention said that we 
should make no law " respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof," and that " no religious test shall ever be required." Good 
dueen Bess had by her proclamations, banished the Baptists from her realm, and 
Irishmen into Ireland ; prohibited the culture of some vegetables whose smell she 
did not like ; prohibited the exportation of corn, money, and various other commo- 
dities from the island, and prohibited the building of houses within three miles of 
London, for fear the town would grow too big; and prohibited surplus apparel to 
the ladies. I suppose she meant the length of skirts and the size of hoops. 
Those who built houses contrary to the proclamation were to be imprisoned, and 
the materials to be forfeited. The constitutional historian says : 

" Some proclamations in this reign held out menaces which the common law never could have executed on the 
disobedient." 

Some of their kings or queens, I forget which, issued a proclamation against 
emigration to New England. This prolbund and accurate writer again says: 



15 

"The proclnniations of Charles's reign are far more numerous than those of his father. They imply a preroga- 
tive of intermeddling with all matters of trade, prohibiting or putting under restraint various articles and the 
home growth of others or establishing regulations fur manufactures. Trices of several minor articles were lixed 
by proclamation, and in one instance this was extended to poultry, butter, and coals." 

So the miners of Pennsylvania and the good dairy women of the Western Re- 
serve and Goshen and Heritimer, and graceful belles with long trains, will see 
that negroes are not the only things that can be reached by proclamations. 

Sir, what does all this dry history mean thai I have been quoting? It means 
that we have a constitutional and a limited Government; that there was much 
wisdom manifested in making it; that there was much need for its being made; 
and that there is as much need for its being obeyed now. It is worthy of all the 
encomiums that have ever been passed on it; it is not commonly remembered 
how much it cost; and, in the language of the President, in his first message to 
the extra Congress, I would say : 

" Whoever, in any section, proposes to abandon such a Government, would do well to consider in deference to 
what principle he does it— what better he is likely to get in its stead — whether the substitute will give, or be iu- 
tended to give, so much of good to the people. There we some J'oreHhudoioiuijs on thU subjicl." 

Ah, sir, those foreshadowings ! I would they were all on one side. 

The President, in his last message to this House, admits that slaves are property, 
and that emancipating them is destroying or divesting property. Then I would 
be pleased to be informed, if ne can take my slave, by what system of reason do 
you convince me he cannot take my horse or my plow, or the land I cultivate 
with that horse and plow? I apprehend the only reason will be found in the fact 
that there is in this country no great political party who hate horses, plows, and 
land. 

Character of our Institutions. 

When the Convention of 1787 had completed their work, and the people had 
ratitirtl it, they had given the government as little power, and the citizen as full 
liberty, as were at all compatible with the true relations that must subsist between 
good government and well protected citizens. The Government was as mild as 
it could be and be strong enough to perform the duty of protection. The citizen 
was left as free as he could be left and owe allegiance and obedience to a good 
Government. Having been born ol revolution, our fathers felt the pains of such 
a political deliverance, and tried to frame a plan by which their children might 
forever be saved the necessity of a resort to force and bloodshed. They did this 
by referring all things to the people, the source of all power, by stated recurrences 
to the ballot-box. The plan is perfect — all it needs is loUowing. How mild, how 
beautiful, how bloodless, how powerful the remedy! 

But the rebels forgot this feature in the wise labor of our fathers. They went 
to war when voting was ail that was needed —and not much of that, for there 
was little to be complained of. And the Administration, in resisting this wicked 
war, has forgotten the useful and bitter historical experience that culminated in 
the American written Constitution, and ia a few months we are carried back to 
the days of prerogative and proclamations. There is another thought in this con- 
nection. While this is all so wrong, it is not so wonderful. The ameliorating 
tendency of the conflict between the people and the crown, in England, had gone 



16 

nearly as far as it could go with any good effect; and the American Constitution 
was putting in practice a theory about governmental power and individual liberty 
so nicely balanced that there was but little margin left on either side, and any 
sudden change that was also great must necessarily be for the worse, by running 
forward into anarchy or backward into despotism. Secession, the spirit of dis- 
integration, does the former at one bound, while the Government, in its anxiety 
to resist so great an evil, has accomplished the latter in about three strides. 

If the tendency of the controversies between our race of people and their gover- 
nors — for I am considering the American Constitution as but a vigorous offshoot 
from the great stock of British experience and of British constitutional history — 
had been to moderate and limit executive power, and elevate the power and im- 
portance of the people; and if, in 1787, that historical process had fully ripened 
its legitimate fruit, by reaching a point beyond which good and wise men would 
not go, when they had it in their power to go as far as they pleased, it is palpable 
that a renewal of armed strife between citizen and government, for which our race 
has been so renowned, can result in but one of two things: ehher the process will 
degenerate into a mobocracy, or the pendulum will swing back a few centuries to- 
ward absolutism. An armed people, succeeding against such a Government, 
would hkely come out of the contest more a mob than a Government; and such 
a Government succeeding against a rebellion so powerful as this, would come out 
of the contest with its powers enlarged in practice and precedent, if not in theory. 
It is in the nature of things. The great blunder, the great crime of the rebellion, 
was to inaugurate such a conflict. Let our wisdom be to resist and suppress the 
rebellion, if it be possible, without invoking the assistance of arbitrary power. It 
is a selfish genius, and having rendered us the asked-for help in so great a matter, 
would surely claim the pleasure of ruling us for at least a season in return i'or the 
aid. If it be said this is an emergency not contempted by the Convention, I reply 
that is begging the argument and criticizing the Constitution ; and I further affirm 
the truth to be, that nearly all the wrongs and oppressions against which the 
framers tried to guard, were done' by government in times of rebellion, and some 
of them were done by the individual Slates on the persons and property of American 
Tories during the revolutionary war. 

Martial, Law and Arrests. 

Mr. Chairman, I have directed the main part of my argument against the 
emancipation proclamation. But while I have noticed that gentleman from the 
North, not agreeing whh the President, are sufficiently earnest and sound upon 
this question, they are even more sensitive upon the subject of the proclamation 
of martial law and arbitrary arrests than' gentlemen from the South. This is 
natural, and easily explained. There are two reasons why we are less sensitive 
than you : one is, we have seen more of it, which is the bad reason ; and the 
other is, we have had more use for it, which is the good reason. You do not 
know so well as we do the stuff this rebellion is made of. You have not lived in 
communities half Union and half rebel, swarming with spies, emissaries, horse- 
thieves, cut-throats, and, what were far more honorable and less dangerous, re- 
turned rebel soldiers beating up for recruits. You have not lived in towns where 
old friends greeted you with a demoniac stare or an averted face, and where you 



17 

could know the news of a disaster to our arms without hearing it and without 
reading it, except as you read it in the malignant gleam of an infernal smile that 
lit up the wrinkled fronts of your enemies. I have quoted the Constitution on 
this subject, and referred to its historical antecedents. I would have the instru- 
ment obeyed to the letter just so long as it can be done without surrendering 
whole local communities to the fierce power and malignant vengeance of local 
conspirators maddened with personal enmity to which the power of an inyasioa 
would be a blessing. Rather than do this I would fling away all written law, 
respect the law of humanity, resolve that society into its original elements, meet 
force with force, and conquer my assailant or be destroyed by him. 

The rebel who earnestly believes in the theory of secession has renounced all 
government. Society or local communities may sometimes be placed in such 
sudden and dangerous emergencies that, like an individual, they cannot tarry for 
the forms and the officers of law, but may slay the assassin then and there. This 
is self-defense. But the act must be confined to the occasion that calls for it, else 
it becomes murder. If you had seen an aged minister of my church sleeping 
night after night upon his musket, in our company of Home Guards; if you had 
seen my Circuit Judge driven to bay, and forted in the court house where he had 
practiced law and administered justice for twenty years, you would better under- 
stand some of the emergencies in which we have been placed. We have gener- 
ally been right in our arrests, because of these emergencies. You are right in 
your opposition to them in your States, because no such emergencies liave existed 
with you. What I claim is, that such things be confined to their local and tem- 
porary necessities, and that in no event can there be any necessity for a rule appli- 
cable to twenty million loyal people, as is the President's martial proclamation. 
And there is this distinction to be observed : whenever men are constrained to 
these irregularities, they necessarily do them as men thrown upon their natural 
rights, and not as officers of a regular Government, The exception can never 
apply to large populations, or to the operations of a great Government; for then it 
ceases to be an exception, and the Government is revolutionized. The militia and 
Home Guards of Kentucky have made many of these arrests. Generally, we 
were riarht ; sometimes we were mistaken, and hardships resulted, I never had 
to order an arrest, I had to hold the men to keep them from arresting half the 
rebel population. 'The President has come into this House — at least his friends 
have brought him here — and asked for indemnily. I voted against it. I ask for 
no indemnity for myself and my friends. We assumed the responsibility then; 
we will take the consequences now, I hope and believe the time for these things 
has passed, I hope there will be no more of it. 

But to return to the Constitution, Can Congress or the President, or both 
combined, adopt such a rule as this proclamation of martial law? The words 
"no person shall be held to answer," &c., embrace everybody. The exceptions 
" in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when in actual ser- 
sice," evidently mean offences committed by persons engaged in such service, and 
against the rules and articles adopted for the government of those arms of the ser- 
vice, and for which they may be held to answer under the Articles of War. But 
to hold that this language means any cases which the President may direct, shall 
be punished by the land and naval forces, is an outrage upon the plain English of 
the thing. After providing all these safeguards, and being at so much pains to 



18 

limit and define treason, what would the fathers have thought if they had been 
told that their sons not in the land or naval service would be tried and punished 
under a military commission for "disloyal practices?" What are disloyal prac- 
tices ? What Constitution, statute, or decision defines them, so that the defendant 
will know how to answer? Is it using rebel arguments, expressing rebel sym- 
pathies, telling rebel lies? There must be something short of levying war or 
giving aid and comfort that will amount to disloyal practices, else the old words 
would have been used and would have answered. If anything short oftlie defini- 
tion of treason will make out a case of " practice," how much slwrt may you come? 
Are we not going back to the days when the Commons felt bound to petition Ed- 
ward III to define treason, and which led to the adoption of the statute bearing 
his name? I repeat the question, what are disloyal practices? The Constitutioa 
is silent. The military commission will determine. I humbly beg them they 
will not determine that my speech against the danger of using the term was itself 
a disloyal practice. What is the punishment for disloyal practices? The law is 
silent. The commission will determine; and the offender will learn to his satis- 
faction when he hears the rattle of a platoon of muskets. I am not defending the 
-bad men whom the proclamation would catch, but only the good men whom it 
would oppress. If I and my neighbors choose to object to the forcible emancipa- 
tion of four million slaves, I do not want us dragged next day before a military 
commission — 

"Brest in a little brief authority," * * * 
" With eye severe, and beard of formal cut." 

War Power. 

But we are told that these measures come within the war power of the Gov- 
ernment. I have to reply, that if they did, the power of making war is vested in 
Congress. But we are told that the Constitution furnishes to its administrators 
two sets of powers — one for war and one for peace. Granting this, does it help 
the argument? It is a platitude that means nothing and proves nothing, for the 
question still remains, what is this war power? Where does it come I'rom? 
What is its nature and extent? Does it come from the Constitution, or outside 
the Constitution? Some are so frank as to admit that they rely on the war power 
of sovereign nations as it exists now, and as it existed and was understood before 
the adoption of our Constitution, under the international code. I admit this view 
of tiie war power as it affects or controls the exercise of that power against foreign 
nations; and that when Congress has declared war, the President, as Commander- 
in-Chief, and his generals in the field, are to be governed by this code in the con- 
duct of the war. But is not this dangerous ground? Is it not admitting too 
much? Whether it would only be treating the rebels as belligerents, or recogniz- 
ing them as a nation, I will not stop to inquire. But this is no foreign war. We 
all claim that the enemy is not a foreign or an independent nation, but only large 
masses of our own citizens engaged in a wicked rebellion. The argument on 
this score fails. Indeed, I doubt very much whether this is a war at all in the 
sense in which the Constitution uses that word, except in the one expression of 
"levying war." It has already been decided by Federal judges that the word 
"enemies," in the clause " adhering to their enemies, giving tliem aid and com- 
fort," means just what it did in the old statute from which it was copied — foreign 
enemies, and not domestic traitors. 



19 

This is a gigantic efTort of the nation, by the use of the nation's strength, to en- 
force the nation's laws against citizens of the nation, in rebellion against those 
laws. The conduct of these citizens brings them within the exact definition of 
the crime of treason as given by the Constitution, and the war is an attempt to 
arrest or disperse them as traitors. The President has called out the posse comitor- 
tus of the nation to assist him; and if rebels are killed in his attempt to arrest them 
and to enforce the law, it is their own fault. If, when they are arrested, they are 
not tried and executed as traitors, but are held and treated and exchanged as pri- 
soners of war, they owe their escape, not to the letter of the law, but to an enlarged 
and enlightened policy, a uniform rule that has sprung from the custom of all na- 
tions, republican and monarchical, not to punish immense masses as you would 
one man, but to conform the conduct of the strife to the principles and policy of 
that general amnesty which all nations are sure to grant at the end of such a war. 
It may be retorted that by admitting that all these armed rebels are traitors, anil 
capitally punishable under the law, and yet insisting that when captured they 
ought not to be hanged as such, but to be treated and exchanged as prisoners of 
war, as the Government really does, we have admitted that a case has arisen 
where the law and the Constitution ought to be neglected or violated. Not at all. 
The pardoning power is in the President, and he might, I apprehend, if a prosecu- 
tion were pending, enter a nolle prosequi through his attorney at the bar. 

Then I claim that, in waging this war, the President has all the power the Con- 
stitution gives him, and no more. I go further, and claim that the Constitution 
gives more power — call it peace power or war power — over a domestic rebel than 
does the law of nations, and gives more power over a domestic rebel than it and 
the law of nations combined give over a foreign enemy. Gentlemen do not gain 
anything by adding the war power of nations to the written and expressed power 
of the Constitution. That instrument gives ample power to suppress a rebellion, 
to enforce the laws, and to punish capitally the rebels who resist the law. Not so 
under the war power as derived from ihe law of nations. You have the right to 
kill your enemy on the battle-field, but no right to hang him when you have 
caught him. Under the Constitution you may confiscate the property of a rebel 
for the term of his life; under the international code, you cannot take the private 
property of alien enemies on land, though they be soldiers and officers taken in 
acts of national hostility. Then applying the rules of international law to this 
emancipation proclamation, and it is unauthorized; because it destroys at least 
$1,000,000,000 of private property, and does this as a war measure, without trial 
or office found. Sir, without stopping to give authorities, without referring to the 
book and the page of Kent, Wheaton, Vattel, Grotius, Puffendorf, Bynkershoek, 
and Montesquieu, I affirm iLnt the rule adduced from these great writers, and the 
rule adduced from the modern customs of civilized and Christian nations, is that 
you cannot destory private property on land. You can seize it, and even destroy 
it, when it has had a public and hostile character imparted to it by being used in 
the war against you. The exceptions to the rule I have laid down are caused by 
present, urgent, and overriding necessity — such necessity as appertains to the 
immediate conduct of a battle or a campaign, as when Washington destroyed a 
house that his batteries might play fairly on Yorktown. It is in the same sense 
that on certain occasions a general would be either a fool or a traitor to send for a 
justice to issue a warrant and a constable to execute it; or, having dispensed with 



20 

their assistance, "would allow the nearest judge to take his prisoner from him under 
habeas corpits, and send him over to the enemy with maps or secret information. 
The cases are easily distinguished. It is only hatred, or the love of power, that 
will magnify the exception into a rule of law. 

What I affirm is, that it is impossible that the exception to the rule, in the form 
of necessity, should ever embrace so vast an amount of property, scattered over so 
vast a territory as the slaves in eleven States, owned promiscuously by rebels and 
loyal men ; or that it can embrace twenty million free people in twenty-two loyal 
States. I repeat, sir, there is nothing gained in the way of power by casting away 
the Constitution and taking up the laws of nations. 

Military Necessity. 

It is constantly urged, not only that necessity is ohe of the rules of war, but 
that the destruction of slavery has become a necessity for' the suppression of this 
rebellion. This is more honest and more definite. It is coming to the point. 
I will not argue the fact of the necessity, but only give myopinion that if the 
rebellion cannot be suppressed without this, it cannot be done with it. 

I only desire to call the attention of the country to this doctrine of war power 
derived from necessity. As I understand the doctrme, it is this,: In a state of war, 
foreign or civil, the "war poAver " may do what is iiecessary to overcome the 
enemy. The President, then, the Commander-in-Chief, gets his power not so 
much from the Constitution, which he swears to support, as from the wdr power; 
and the power thus derived is measured not so much by any written rule as by 
the necessity of the particular emergency ; and the emergency and necessity, and 
the fitness of the remedy proposed, are all determined by him. 

Then it has come to this, that our Constitution is a system of government tor 
the piping times of peace, but in the midst of arms all its laws are silent. It has 
come to this, that it is a good law as long as it is obeyed, but no law at all when 
violated by a traitor. The first rude blast, or even a small speck of war, suspends 
the Constitution, and substitutes a higher law, the law of necessity — one man 
being the judge of the occasion, the necessity, and of the measure of harshness or 
destruction demanded. Whatever else may be said of the- proposition, I like its 
plainness. I like to deal with an adversary whom I can understand. He gives 
us a despotism instead of a regular and liiiiited government. There is no escaping 
the conclusion. Surely it does not require any argument to prove that this- prin- 
ciple is as dangerous to one section as to another. I am not resisting it for the. 
harm it would i!o the plotters and doers of treason. Morally, they deserve almost 
anythi-rig that can be inflicted. But I resist it for myself, for my children, and for 
the loyal people of ray country. The advocates of this higher law theory are. as 
much rebels against the Constitution as the Southern secessionists. The only 
difl'erence between them is that the Southern rebel had the pjuck to take up arms 
in defence of his lolly and wickedness, while the Northern rebel is defending his 
in his stump speeches, his editorials, his sermons, his prayers, and his votes in 
Congress. While he is "singing psalms thro-ugh his nose," his Southern ally is 
sleejxing in a swamp, scaling a mountain to the tune of the Marseillaise, or dying 
in the last ditch. 

When the Tories, under James, persecuted the Whigs, the Whigs complained 



21 

biiterly of arrests witliout warrant, that thoy could get no copy of an inilictnient, 
that they were not allowed counsel and sworn witnesses, thai they were imprisoned 
■without a known cause, and kept long in prison without a trial. The Tories an- 
swered, '"necessity and public danger." When James fled the realm, and 
William of Orange ascended the throne, the tables were turned. The Jacobites 
and Tories constantly intrigued lor a restoration, atul they in turn were Ibund 
complaining of imprisonment without writs and without overt acts, that they 
could get no specifications, and were allowed no trial. The Whigs rather Celt the 
force of the complaint, but ol'ten replied, " necessity and public danger." 

And so it has ever gone. The fault is in human nature, and Governments are 
to control human nature. There is much may be said in favor of the arrest! the 
banishment, and even the destruction of an unprincipled conspirator, against whom 
little or nothuig overt can be proved, and yet who, as everybody knows, is plotting 
for the destruction of the Government whose protection he is receiving. The 
danger is, that if these things are not done according to rule — in our case the 
Constitution — the necessity will always be found on the side of the ins, and the 
hardships and mistakes on the side of the outs. Can we not rise above the jeal- 
ousies, and the hatreds of the hour, the more animal part of human nature, and 
lift ourselves to that elevation of view where there is a clearer air and a Avider 
range — where we can see the faults of ourselves as well as the sins of the rebels'? 
We are struggling with contending currents ; we are in the fog, and we are fretted. 
From the neighboring heights we can see where the one will lead us, into a placid 
harbor, laden with the prosperity of a thousand interests, and girt round with the 
granite walls of the Constitution, where the breath of storm can never light; the 
other, into the maelstrom of anarchy and violence, whose vortex we can only 
escape by fleeing to the dead sea of despotism, and anchoring ourselves firmly, 
submissively, forever upon its stagnant and fetid bosom. 

A B .\. n Policy. 

Waiving the question of constitutionality, the proclamation of emancipation 
was an impolitic, an unwise, and a frightfully unfortunate measure. It consoli- 
dates the people of the Southern States and makes a unity of them, and imparts 
to them the energy of despair, with a show of justice in the eyes of the world 
they never had before. In the beginning, they raised the I'alse cry that they were 
striking for their homes and firesides. Shall we make that true which was false? 
Many Union men, who had firmly resisted the tide of events and of public opiniou 
up to that time, gave way and succumbed. Some of the most melancholy in- 
stances of this have occurred in East Tennessee among the most loyal, the rwost 
neglected, and the most oppressed people on this continent. It confounds and 
embarrasses Union men in the border and Western States. They bad a thousand 
tlines argued, nay, some of them had promised no such radicalism would be 
adopted by the Administration ; and cited the inaugural, and the messages, the 
Sherman and the Crittenden resolutions, in proof of their position. Oh ! sir, could 
members only see the cruel advantage that proclamation gave the rebels and rebel 
sympathisers over the friends of the Union in my country, they would go in a 
body and demand of the President — who they claim is a good man — that he recant 
the unfortunate order. Considering it only as a war measure, it is not merely a 



22 

paper wad. Tt is more. It is a blunder and an injustice that injures only the 
friends of the Government. We had worked manfully against the tempest, 
but now — 

" Yon mar our labor. 
You do assist tha storm." 

How is this proclamation to be enforced? It cannot be enforced in a given 
State or district until our arms have possession of the country. And when we 
have acquired possession and control of a given district of country so that we can 
enforce the laws, that is all you want, without the proclamation, if you were 
honest in passing the Crittenden resolution, the best penned resolution that appears 
on the record of our political history. It is equally useless, premature, and even 
dangerous, where we have no possession and no control. 

"The man that once. did sell the lion's skin 
While the beast yet lived, -was killed with hunting him." 

What use, then, is intended to be made of the proclamation'? Is it the policy 
of him who ougiit to be the political saviour as well as the President of tiie Re- 
public to make the negro his apostle, to go before him crying aloud in the South, 
baptizing the country in blood and fire to preach the coming of his great salvation 1 
Considered in the light of a threat, it is a poor compliment to the hereditary spirit 
of the races from which we are all sprung, to the blood that courses through all 
our veins. 

Servile Insurrection. 

But, Mr. Chairman, the most cruel and alarming and abhorrent feature of this 
thing is the servile insurrection and war that must follow the attempts to enforce 
it. We are told there is no invitation to the negroes to do this. In terms there is 
not, practically there is in the offer of freedom, and in the promise that nothing 
shall be done to resist their assertion of that freedom. Others say it is not meant that 
way, and need not and will not result that way ; that it is simply freeing a certain 
class without telling them to do murder. Mr. Chairman, is it intended to add in- 
sult to injury? Are we to be mocked at in this way? To be told that such a 
measure as this, offering sudden emancipation to such a class, against the preju- 
dices and the admitted legal rights of such spirits as Southern rebels and Southern 
planters, will not lead to bloodshed of the most revolting character known to the 
history of the world ! Others more honest, or perhaps only more impudent and 
devilish, tell us plumply : "of course there will be insurrection and servile war; 
bu*whose fault is it? Did not the rebels bring on the war, and is not servile in- 
surrection an incident of such a war ; and have we not a right to ask all human 
beings to assist us in suppressing such a rebellion?" Great God! has it come to 
this? Could I call up the spirit of a Chatham to this floor, or borrow the power 
of the living orator to hurl only one thunderbolt at this great iniquity ! When our 
fathers severed the ties that bound them to the mother country, they stated, as one 
of their complaints, that the king had " endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of 
our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an 
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions." And now, our 
Government invokes the assistance of more than three millions of beings who, the 
friends of the measure have long been telling us, are made barbarous and revenge- 
ful by a long course of oppression, and whose modes of war, as far as we can 



23 

learn from Africa and ihe Indies, are as much worse than the red man's as the red 
man's is worse than the wliiie man's. What will the world think? What will 
be the "opinion of mankind," for which we ought ah^ays to have a "decent 
respect," when they compare the complaints of our fathers with the conduct of 
their children, especially when they remember that the rebels inherited their much 
haled property from their lathers, who bought it in large part from your lathers, 
and paid them in gold and silver and tobacco, the three circulating mediums and 
legal tenders of that day. Are gentlemen so bent on a given policy towary 
slavery, and so maddened by hatred to slave owners, that they will go any len;zihs, 
regardless even of the friends of the Government in the doomed districts? Think 
of ihose I'riends. Remember thai the weeds and the flowers are closely mixed, 
and be careful that in rooling out the one you do not tear up the other. It 
is a proclamation to 

" Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, 
Ul'ri)ar the universal feace, confuund 
All iiiiitv on earth." 

The confiscation acts of last session had already taken away all the properly of 
rebels. All ii needed, at least, w'as lo be enforced ; and, therefore, all that is left 
for I he proclamation to effect is to take away the property of Union men. To my 
mind it is not the value of the property thus destroyed that is most objectionable; 
it is the principle, or the violaiion of i)rincipie, involved. My own opinion is, the 
rebels- have committed the act of bankruptcy in regard to that spepies of properly, 
anil have made it very doubtful whether the assets will pay the costs of a sptlle- 
nicril under a commission I'rom any Government. If gentlemen could have been 
in Kentucky lo see the gloom on ilie faces of Union men, caused by this procla- 
mation, and the delight that beamed from the faces of rebels when that edict went 
forth, they would enlenain diflerent views of it as a war measure. And why did 
it cause these different emotions in the two classes of our people? Because 
one saw and lelt it as the greatest blow against the Union, and tlie other saw it 
was an engine of inexorable logic in their hands. 

My Own Position. 

For myself, I have no dilTicuhy in concluding that the Government of the 
whole Union, with all its power, and all its guarantees, is worth more to me and 
my posterity and to the whole country than the institution of Al'rican slavery. 
Therefore, if I had lo sacrifi.'e one to save the other, I would crucify slavery, and 
save the Government. In other words, if by the force of anything chargeable to 
slavery, I had to choose between them as between two things of different value — 
if I had to take the Government without slavery or slavery without the Govern- 
ment — I would say of slavery, as some gentlemen long ago said of the U'niou on 
this floor, " let it slide." 

But at this point we differ wiih the radicals. I deny that in any possible con- 
tingency can the destruction, by the Government, of the institution in the Stales 
become either a necessary, a wise, or a conducive measure in preserving the 
Government. I go further: I aflirm that any such destruction is, pro tanto, a 
destruction of the Government, or such a revolution in its principles as that it 
does not remain the same; because the Constitution not only recognizes properly 



24 

in slaves bu* provides for the security of tiie master's interest in the labor of his 
slave, and makes it the duty of the President to take care that the laws be exe- 
cuted. I deny the necessity and the fitness of the measure, because I deny the 
incompatibility between the two systems of labor. I deny that the slave system 
was the cause of the rebellion, and affirm that if it were, its destruction would not 
be a legitimate mode of warfare, as recognized by the laws of nations ; and deny- 
ing that such destruction' can in any event he a political or a military necessity, or 
a constitutional measure, I can in no event be in favor of such a scheme as the 
President's proclamation embraces. In this statement of my own views I have 
purposely used the word Government instead of the word Union. It means more: 
it is the Government; the Constitution, that makes the Union. There can be no 
good Government with secession recognized and accepted as a principle of politi- 
cal science. And there can be no Union but the unity of despotism, or a Union 
for bloody vengeance, under the principles of the proclamation. Nor would I 
ever surrender to the rebellion, based as it is upon secession. If 1 am told that 
' such an effort, so great a war as will be required to reinstate and enforce the Con- 
stitution and laws all over the States and Terrhories of the Union, would exhaust 
the national vitality and the resources of both parties, I reply that neither party 
will allow it to come to that. The exhaustion of war restores the reason and cools 
the passions of belligerents, and generally results in an accommodation that has 
more of the name than' the essence of a compromise — some platitude that is 
soothing to the feelings. But if it must be otherwise, then let it be. Nations in 
their dangers and duties are very much like men. A nation had better die by 
fighting than die by rotting; and a man had better risk breaking his neck in the 
attempt to extinguish the flames that consume his dwelling than to lie supinely 
down and be consumed in the conflagration. 

Emancipation and Colonization. 

To return to the subject of emancipation as proposed by the President. No 
clear solution of it has been offered. Emancipate tour millions of rude, uncultivated 
people, who, while slaves, labor successfully only under the direction of masters 
who understand them, and labor scarcely at all as freemen, and then only under 
the compulsion of want, and what will you do with them? What have you 
done for theml What have you done for their white neighbors'? We are told 
they shall be colonized. Where will you put them, a larger population than the 
thirteen colonies contained at the Revolution 1 You have no vacant territory for 
them that they could subsist in, none at least which the white race from any sec- 
tion would allow them to possess for two generations. What other nation is going 
to surrender its territory for such a use, or allow its own population to be sub- 
merged by an inundation from such a black sea ? You talk about Central America 
and South America as if they were already yours, and you were governing them 
as territories or colonies. What diplomatist have we who could successfully con- 
duct a negotiation with any foreign Power for territory, and answer the retort that 
we were seeking to thrust upon them a population we would not keep among our- 
selves? What will the expense be? Count the cost of purchasing them a coun- 
try, the cost of corai^ensating loyal owners, the cost of transportation, and of sup- 
port on the voyage and for several months alter they have landed on the shore to 
■which you have exiled them, (which is a necessity in the scheme,) and put it in all 



25 

at only $250 per head, and you have the j^utn of $1,000,000,000 for that. Add 
to this the cost of the war, which will not fall sliort of $2,000,000,000. if just 
chums are all settled, and stolen sums all counted, and we have the enormous sum 
of $3,000,000,000, or ahout one hundred dnHars to every white man, woman, and 
child in the country. The farmer of small means, who, with himself, wife, and 
children, counts ten in family, would shoulder and pay $1,000 of it, or pay $G0 per 
year all his life for the interest on it. And. all for what? To pay for the Sunday 
rlietoric of a horde of canting, white-cravated divines, who know nothing of 
slavery and less of religion ; who thought they were called to preach Christ and 
him crucified, but have shown it was only to scream the negro and him eman- 
cipated: Would not that $60 be better spent on that manly little boy whose first 
impressions ar^iat life is a prolonged struggle Avith adversity and taxcsJand that 
Government is out a machine for extortion — thus preparing in the child a man for 
treason, strategy, and spoils ! Would it not be grateful to that thoughtful or melan- 
choly mother to spend that $60 a year, or a fourth part of it, in educating her sun- 
browned little girl, who is every week robbed of fourteen hours of balmy sleep or joy- 
ous play in order to prepare the flax, the wool, or the cotton for the family clothing ? 
The scheme of the proclamation and the message are alike impracticable; and, if 
they were practicable, the people of this country, either North or South, are not 
going to tax themselves to pay the interest on such an enormous debt contracted in 
the perpetration of so enormous a folly. Aye, sir, fur more than folly — for the ex- 
termination, gradual though it be, of a whole race of people. For I again ask, 
what will you do with them ? Will you send them North, or even allow them to 
go there? If you do, they will be incontinently driven out by your outraged con 
stituents. I call as witnesses the laws and constitutions. of many Northern States 
on that subject, as well as the acknowledged aversion to dwelling with them, so- 
cially or politically, on terms of equality. Should they be allowed to go and 
remain there tliey would soon become a marked and an outcast people. They 
cannot become the owners of your soil or the schoolmates of your children until 
your tastes are changed, although some fools would have them to become members 
of your families, and to perpetuate at once your politics and your blood. They 
would not be admitted as witnesses to prove acts of oppression against them by 
those bad white men who always seek to speculate or presume on the misfortunes 
of others. They would become your hewers of wood and drawers of water ; they 
would be your slaves practically, though not in name — a slavery with most of its 
hardships and none of its kindlier features, for it would not he your interest, as it 
is with us, and you would not be bound by law, as we are, to visit them when 
they are sick, feed them when they are hungry, and cl'ithe them when they are 
naked. They would either become vagabond strollers from house to house, as 
hunger and cold pinched them, or by the repulsion of social tastes, and the jealousy, 
if not the interests, of your intelligent free white laborers, become crowded into 
squallid settlements of their own, and, in either eveiU, would become rapidly ex- 
tinct. You will thus have become the exterminators of a race you would have 
freed and made equal to their masters. If they cannot he transported, and if you 
will not receive them into your own arms, what else will be done with them? 
Shall they be left in the country where they were emancipated, with their untamed 
passions, made fiercer by sudden liberty, brought in contact with the prejudices, the 
outraged feelings, the violated rights, and the natural and educated feeling of su- 
periority of their late masters? Would the true friends of either race desire this? 



26 



War of Races. 

In that coiKJition, one of two thino;s would overtake them; either they will 
silently and gradually resume their places under their masters, when the labor of 
your love shall have been lost; or else, what is far more probable, it will result in 
a war of races between the two populations. In this event, do not flatter your- 
selves that tne hatred and thetliirst for vengeance, which some of you feel, would be 
gratified in the success of the negro. In any armed contest between him and the 
wliite man, the negrn will go under and out of sight — and then, what would the 
two factions have to agitate? Having agitated the country asunder, and agitated 
the negro out of existence, and pmclaimpd away the liberties of the people of both 
sections, (lor Mr. Davis issues proclamations as well as our own President, J it is to 
be hoped they would rest for a season. 

But suppose a different result. Suppose the black insurrection, aided by the 
Army and Navy of the United States, should prove a success. You know very 
well that the late master and the newlv made free negro will not live together. 
Betwet^n violence and emigration, the white man would disappear from a large 
skirt of country on the Gulf, and we would have a neighboring black republic, 
or a number of colonies very difficult to govern. And then what? Do you not 
know, does not all history teach, that as he remains indolent or becomes predatory 
in his habits, and as your children become crowded for room, the descendants of 
the conquerors of Piiilip would find no difficulty in concluding that the black man 
had no more right to the savannahs of the South than the red man had to the hills 
and valleys of New England ? If you do not know this, you have not analyzed 
the blood or studied the history of our race. Why is it that the Northern man going 
South makes the most rigid taskmaster? Not because he is a meaner man, but 
because he does not understand the negro, and therefore does not sympathise with 
him as the Southern man does. Then view this gigantic scheme of the President 
as we will, and its results are only evil to the white man and destruction to the 
black mfin. 

There is this difl'erence between me and the advocates of violent emancipation : 
they hate slaveholders more than they do the Evil One, and love their philosophy 
more than they do the providences of God. I hate robbery, murder, arson, rape, 
and infanticide, more than I would hate slavery were I myself the slave; and I 
love the providences of God more than I love that system of servitude He has per- 
mitted in that country where He has cast my lot. I have more confidence in His 
wi.Ndom, His day, and His mode, than I have in abolition platitudes. The control 
of individuals is with Governmc nt. But I believe the location and disposition, the 
destiny, the increase or demise of whole races, are things above the reach of 
finite wisdom, and only in that of the Infinite One. I therefore refer this thing 
to His hands, seeing and leeling it is too large for my mind. 

Mr. Chairman, how is this proclamation to be enforced without the assistance of 
the negro, and what kind of assistance will he render ? The scene would attract 
the pencil of genius, did it not freeze and repel the affections of humanity. In 
the foreground stands the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief 
of the Army and Navy, sword in hand, bearing full high on its flaming point the 
proclamation of freedom to a whole race, who can only read it as an invitation to 



27 

insurrection and servile war. Tlie body of the canvas is filled with an innumera- 
ble host of these beings, intoxicated with blood and bloody instructions, flourish- 
ing the torch, the axe, the knife, with ruin leaping from their eyes, and lust 
hanging upon their lips. In the midst, in painful relief, are seen the flames ol a 
burning home, illumining and making more ghastly a scene which the shades of 
night had vainly oflTered to screen from the view of man and of God. In the 
garden lies hidden a murder-stricken child clinging to an outraged mother, and 
pleading for that protection which an absent father and brother alone could give. 
Others are dimly seen fleeing and crouching in the swamps and the brakes which 
kindly offer them a place to starve, to sicken, and to die. It is to those who, in 
the language of a great judge, •' from their tender years or other disability cannot 
be loyal or otherwise," tliat this proclamation says: 

" But if you frown upon this proffered peace. 
You tempt tlie fury of my three attendants. 
Lean famine quartering steel, and climbing firo." 

In the backaround are seen a vast army of men clad in the habiliments and the 
armor of United Slates soldiers, with the blushing banner of their former renown 
drooping above them, a vast and noble navy riding at anchor hard by, and all with 
orders not to resist but to aid in this horrid tragedy. The picture grows too dark — 
nay, too red, red with the flames of incendiarism and the blood of assassination — 
to be looked upon with any other emotion than that of deep and profound and un- 
utterable horror. 
.Sir, it had as well be known now, it had as well be stated plainly, and it were 
well for all concerned if the powers that be would believe it, that the country does 
not intend to submit to these things. I do not mean only that the loyal men of 
loyal slave States are objecting — I mean what I said, the people; and the late 
elections justify me in the breadth of the language. Neither am I flinging off a 
cheap edition of that stereotyped, ill-nalured, and imprudent, not to say low bred 
threat of secession, that has so often been flung into the faces of gentlemen on this 
floor. Whatever else we may do or be driven to by your folly, we do not intend 
to secede. Some of you try to goad us into secession. We will not please you 
so much. We will have no such government as the Southern Confederacy, based 
as it is upon the principle of licensed disobedience of law and the voluntary dis- 
integration of empire. No, sir; we can do belter. This Government is our 
Government as well as yours, and we mean to have and to demand all our rights 
under it. In making this demand we will appeal to the great conservative party 
of the North, and they will come to the rescue. Tiie victory promises to be a 
bloodless one. They will beat you at your own homes. The decree has gone 
forth that the Constitution must and shall be saved from all its enemies, among 
whom I class many of the friends of the proclamation, who are friendly to their 
country, but with more zeal than knowledge. We desire, aye, sir, we are deter- 
mined that the rebellion shall be suppressed, but we are equally determined that 
our own liberties shall not be suppressed with it. 



28 



The Hope of the CouNTRy. 

Mr. Clmirman, my yet young heart longs for the glorious Republic of my boy- 
hood's affections, that glorious " no North, no South, no East, no West " of but 
a i'ew years ago; those better days of better construction of better feeling, and of 
loftier eloquence. What is now the hope of this country? Assailed on one side 
by higher-law-ism and war-power-ism; assailed on the other by secession, perjury, 
treason of the foulest dye; the Constitution defied and contemned by a powerful 
insurrection, and the same Constitution being cast aside or avowedly disregarded 
by a dominant party, as being insufficient for the work of its own preservation; 
what, I ask is our hope 7 On one side is the spirit of dissolution, a political struma 
that would soon slough away the vitals as well as the territory of any republic in 
which it is adopted as a legal right, or received as a truthful principle in politics. 
There is no hope in that direction. On the other we have acts, assumptions, 
measures, that lack only the name to make the Government an unlimited depotism. 
There is no hope in that direction. Then where is the hope of the country? 
Sir, it is in that great middle conservative parly that will resist, and i& here to-day 
to resist both extremes, both heresies, both rebellions against the Constitution, 
And I thank the iates that rule us that this element is stronger in the country, and 
will be stronger in the next Congress than it is to-day, in this Hall. 

If I am told this is too much to be undertaken in the present conjuncture, and 
that the elements of rebellion and higher law being practically in co-operation, 
though seeniingly opposed, make a power for aggression too great to be resisted 
by the conservative element, I have only to respond, be it so. If so great madness 
has overtaken the country, let us find it out. It is said to precede destruction. 
Let us make an honest and a brave effort to save the country; and if, making it, 
we go down, the Constitution — mark my words — the Constitution and the liberties 
of the country go down with us. The great problem will have been solved — the 
great experiment will have proved a failure — and the people, who will have failed 
to govern themselves, will then deserve to be governed by a master. In this great 
upheaval, this commingling of tempest and earthquake, we have selected our 
chart. It is simple and truthful. The polar star that guides us on our way is the 
Union off all the States, and the solar sun that lights us on that way is the 
Constitution that makes that Union — the great center around which they cluster 
and upon which they hang. If on this strong and simple platform, including the 
provision for amendments, we cannot ride the storni, then the fates are against us; 
and when we go down, we will have one only consolaiion — ^if such it may be 
called — that, though secessionists and traitors, fanatics and higher law men have 
triumphed over the Constitution and the liberties of their country, they will also 
have reaped the reward of their own folly, for they, in turn, will be speedily and 
bitterly crushed under the ruins of that great temple whose pillars they under- 
mined and pulled down. I have another hope. It is in a return to reason, good 
pron)is6>s, and the Constitution. Any man may cling to an error; a brave man 
becomes braver, a generous man more generous, in renouncing it. 



29 



The Danger. 

These people both North and South, thouajh more at the South than the North, 
are tlircatenccl with a danger which many of them do not suspect. They may yet 
fuliill a great historical rule. I believe it was Washington who said there was a 
natural progression from liberty abused to licentiousness into anarchy,. a^|d from 
anarchy into despotism. There are volumes of history and political philosophy 
compressed into that observation. Tliere is a limit to the endurance of human 
nature. When a people have become wearied, war worn, disgusted; when their 
substance is consumed, and the weeds and the bramble have conquered the garden, 
the field, and the orchard; when the voice of the little ones is heard crying for 
bread, and mothers that weep, refusing to be comforted, because their children are 
not: when the iron of war has pierced the hearts of the strong men, and their stout 
spirits are broken, there is always a murmur heard abroad in the land which a 
grasping genius is quick to detect and improve. It is, "give us any government 
rather thati none; give us peace on any terms ; give us the protection of a master 
rather than the fury of a mob " A Protector offers himself with an army of reck- 
less, hungry soldiers at his back. How winning the name! But it has always 
lacked only another name to make him a monarch or a despot, and the people have 
scarcely surrendered before the name, the crown, the power, are all assumed. 

Mr.Ckittenden. 

Mr. Chairman, the presence here of my venerable colleague, who sits before me, 
ought to admonish us. Here he lingers, the contemporary and the compeer of the 
great Commoner, who would "rather be right than be President; " the great Ex- 
pounder, from whose teachings I learned to condemn this rebellion on principle; 
the Iron Will of the Hermitage; the Old Man Eloquent; and that historical Sen- 
ator who for thirty years illustrated the debates in the other end of the Capitol with 
facts. Here he stands, one of the few yet uobroken links between the calam- 
ities of the present and the glories of the past, raising his voice ever and anon, and 
pleading earnestly, with great arguments, for the Constitution: with one arm 
entwined around his bleeding storm-tossed country, and the other around the 
mausoleum of the great dead, as if he would anchor the one to the memories of 
the other. Will I excite a sneer from the disciples of higher law by invoking 
for my country the blessings of those memories, and pleading with them to hearken 
to the lessons of law and order, of patriotism and .eloquence, that come to us 
from the tombs of those who, dead, yet speaketh ? 

A Summary. 

]\Ir. Chairman, I have not protested against this proclamation froih any sympa- 
thy I have for armed men in rebellion against their Government. For them, and 
with their cause, I have no sympathy. I have often doubted whether I would 
trust myself to do them simple justice. Without forgetting that it does not in 
terms apply to my own State, I do yet, with all the earnestness of an earnest na- 
ture, protect, against it, for myself and my children, for my State and for the whole 
country, t protest against it for the women and minors, the aged and the intirm, 
and for the UPml people of the rebel States. Guided by the example of divine cle- 
mency that spai^^d a wicked city, there is yet enough righteousness left in the rebel 



30 

States to save them from the destroying angel who is to execute this proclamation. 
I protest against it as a violation of the Constitution and the liberties of my country. 
I protest against it as a violation of the laws of humanity, the laws of nations, and 
the usages of civilized warfare. I protest against it as unwise, uncalled for, tend- 
ing to widen the breach rather than to hasten the conclusion of this war. I pro- 
test against it as being in the highest degree offensive to those great European anti- 
slavery Po.wers with whom it is as much our duty as our interest to be on good 
terms, when those terms are consistent with our own honor. I protest against it 
as being, not on the part of the President, but of those who have urged him to it, 
malicious, revengeful, and blood thirsty, and therefore not suited to the tastes and 
purposes of heroic enemies and generous soldiers. I protest against it as being as 
much a sin against the religion of Christ as it is an offence to the moral sentiment 
of mankind. And above all, I protest against it as being the cause to which the 
friends and leaders of the rebellion may and will attribute their ultimate success, 
if ever a calamity so unmeasured overtakes the fortunes of the republic. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 933 225 4 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

II |r|l!ll||!!J! !l!l|illiri;i !M 



011 933 225 4 



J 



HoIIinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 933 225 4 



J 



Hollinger 

pH8.5 

Mill Run F3-1955 



